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December 20, 2022 · 11:32 am

Facilitating Internet Communication through Linguistic Innovations: A Final Analysis

Within the past few decades, the internet has grown exponentially as a way for people to communicate across both distance and time. Unlike a phone call, text messages and social media posts exist long after they are created. And unlike a letter in the mail, with its delay between sender and recipient, internet users can write to each other synchronously, allowing quick turnarounds in communication.

We might expect that language might shift or be adapted to better serve the users writing in this new context. Certainly, new vocabulary has been created to discuss this technology and how we use it, but new vocabulary is created with every change to technology, culture, or politics. Why would linguistic changes influenced by the internet be different than any other linguistic changes? The answer is that the internet is not only giving rise to new vocabulary, but to linguistic strategies and innovations that allow users to more successfully communicate through written text.

Limitations of Written Language

If we conceptualize written language as simply spoken language recorded visually, then by all accounts we should have no issues communicating online. But spoken language and written language are not simply the same thing in two different mediums. 

Written language cannot capture many features of spoken language, such as body language, facial expression, gestures, speed, tone, and volume (Crystal 23). We can say “yeah” in a hundred different ways with a hundred shades of meaning, but when written down these shades of meaning are lost. Standard written English does allow for some variation – “Yeah. Yeah! Yeah?” – but it’s far from comprehensive. Losing these nuances inhibits how clearly we’re able to communicate with each other in an informal conversation.

User-Created Solutions

The apparent solution to our problem, then, is to find a way to encode these non-lexical cues into written language so as to avoid miscommunications and misunderstandings. And internet users have slowly been doing just that. In some cases these encoded cues directly imitate speech, while in other cases they’re disconnected from spoken speech entirely (Haas 390, 395, Izazi 30). With this in mind, it is more accurate to describe language on the internet as “writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech rather than as speech which has been written down” (Crystal 21). 

Many of these cues help to facilitate communication by creating a sense of intimacy or familiarity between users. This is helpful, since the lack of verbal or nonverbal cues makes it difficult to establish rapport between users and to evaluate relationships between users. Establishing specific strategies to create intimacy then allows users to better evaluate whether an online correspondent is akin to a colleague, an acquaintance, or a friend. In turn, users then have some of the social context needed to determine the meaning of a message. 

Most if not all of these encoded cues buck the rules of formal written language. Informality, in general, conveys a sense of intimacy; informal language becomes disrespectful when it assumes a sense of intimacy that is inappropriate for the context (Darics 145). Additionally, the sometimes opaque rules surrounding the use of these various cues can create an in-group between those who understand and use these conventions and those who do not (McCulloch 148-149). This shared in-group identity can lead to further feelings of familiarity between users.

In short, these linguistic innovations are being used both to convey non-lexical information to readers and to create a shared sense of intimacy or camaraderie between users.

Typographical Innovations

Punctuation

Nonstandard use of punctuation to influence reader interpretations of messages has been recorded in English, Malay, Russian, and Slovene-speaking online communities (Crystal 63, Izazi 28, Novikova 77, 79, Šabec 7). These nonstandard uses are simply a broadening of punctuation’s standard function in written texts: to mark the flow of speech. In addition to showing readers where to pause or stop, punctuation can also be used to indicate information about the writer’s tone or intention. 

Periods may be the most infamous when it comes to punctuation being used in new, nonstandard ways. The ability to send multiple short messages rather than a single wall of text means periods are less needed as a stop between sentences. The intentional inclusion of an unnecessary period, then, indicates a sense of formality, which can be off putting in a conversation with someone the user has a fairly informal relationship with (McCulloch 113-114). On the other hand, a period in the middle of a sentence (“I would go but. I’m tired.”) is still nonstandard usage and does not carry this sense of formality. Rather, it functions to put emphasis on a certain word or to imitate a speech pattern. The reader is told how the utterance should be read and a feeling of informality or intimacy is affirmed. 

Using the exclamation mark in standard fashion, meanwhile, won’t send the wrong message to a reader. But in addition to its function of expressing excitement or emphasis, it is also used online to indicate warmth and sincerity; to be excited is to be sincere, after all (McCulloch 123-124). 

Other punctuation marks have also found new uses as markers of emphasis or tone. Ellipses (…) mark an author trailing off, while some users include a tilde (~) to mark sarcastic comments (McCulloch 112-113, 137). Asterisks (*), hashtags (#), and underscores (_) can emphasize text in both English and Russian-speaking contexts (Crystal 64, McCulloch 130, Novikova 71). Carrots (< >) and slashes (/) can be used to explicitly mark tone without including it in the main body of a message, as with  “<sarcasm>” or “/rant” (McCulloch 127). Although functions may differ slightly, we can see that these punctuation marks are used to provide the reader with information about the writer’s intentions, what they deem important, or their tone. 

Text Manipulation

Text manipulation (bolding, italics, underlining, color, size, etc) is often less accessible to online users. But that is not to say text manipulation is never used to convey non-lexical information. Russian users, for example, have used strikethrough text as a way to express their opinions while acknowledging these opinions are contrary to common societal views (Novikova 71). Strikethrough text is used for sections of opinions which are controversial, and users follow these sections with a milder form of the opinion. In the example “did the police readers recognize you…?” the user expresses self awareness of how ‘police’ might be reframed by other people as ‘readers’ (71). The author is thus able to express their opinion while acknowledging this opinion is controversial or otherwise not agreed upon. Although this does not perfectly reflect spoken speech, where such a sentiment might be conveyed through tone, an eye roll, or a gesture, the strikethrough text is able to perform the same discursive function.

Spelling

Abbreviations, shortened words, and other nonstandard spellings seem to be fairly common, having been found in data from Arabic, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users (Fenianos 68, Haas 386, Izazi 22, Novikova 72). These spellings may be used to indicate informality, to cut down on keystrokes, or to “suggest pronunciation or…to draw attention to associations between…ways of pronouncing words and certain regional and cultural dialects” (Haas 386). 

Nonstandard spelling can also serve other uses; for example, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users can use full capitalization or lengthened words with repeated letters to convey both emotion and emphasis (Crystal 63, Darics 142-143, Izazi 25, 27-28, McCulloch 115, Novikova 71). Meanwhile, Malay users misspell words to create a sense of playfulness; since Malay spelling is phonetic, these misspelled words invoke humorous sounding pronunciations (Izazi 26). 

Arabic-speaking users, meanwhile, can take nonstandard spelling a step further by using Arabizi, an informal way of writing Arabic with the Latin alphabet (Davies 75-76). There are no standard spellings in this user-created system (Vavichkina 204). Arabizi users in Morocco have expressed hesitation around using it with older people or peers whom they don’t know well. This suggests that the informality of Arabizi also carries a sense of intimacy or familiarity that would be impolite or uncomfortable to impose on strangers (Davies 76).

Word Choice

In addition to choices of how to type, users must also decide what to type. 

Sound words (like ‘haha’ to indicate laughter) are used by both English and Malay-speaking users to convey action or emotion to readers (Izazi 23, Tagliamonte 15). These sound words can express genuine amusement or be used in more sarcastic or ironic manners; in either case, they allow users to replicate an aspect of spoken language (or, more precisely, the function of those aspects) (Izazi 24). 

Some words convey emotion in a way that is much more disjointed from spoken language. One of these, the keysmash, is a nonsensical string of letters that serves as an expression of an emotion like excitement, shock, or confusion (Izazi 25). Unlike ‘haha’, ‘adjlklfojfl’ or the like is not meant to be an actual transcription of a sound people are making. Rather, the chaotic and disjointed visual of the keysmash refects the messiness of the emotion being conveyed. Alternatively, as the name suggests, the emotion being conveyed is so overwhelming that the sender could not focus enough on the keyboard to type out a lexically meaningful message.

Other words may communicate very little information. Response tokens, for instance, are filler messages or phatic words or phrases (‘lol’, ‘wow’) that appear fairly frequently in samples of text-messages (Fenianos 68-69, Haas 392, 395, Tagliamonte 15-16). Response tokens do not communicate new information, but simply acknowledge or display interest in messages sent by other participants in the conversation. The back and forth of a conversation can thereby be sustained.

Linguistic Identities

Language choice can also express identity, and in turn establish intimacy through a shared identity. Accents, after all, are clearly apparent in a face to face conversation and can allow speakers to quickly identify whether the speaker is part of a linguistic in-group or not. The use of a specific language or a change in spelling marks the user as bring from a specific geographic location and similarly allows them to find other individuals who speak their language or dialect (Ferguson 132, 138, 140). In turn, users develop a sense of intimacy based on their shared linguistic and regional identity (147).

For example, speakers of dialects from Northern England may choose to specifically encode features of their spoken speech into their tweets to assert their linguistic/regional identity (Nini 286-287). In one sample of tweets from Northern England, “clear geographical patterns” were detected for most of the dialectal spellings, despite these spellings being fairly infrequent (276). The overall infrequency of the spelling variants suggests that users who do use these variants are choosing to use them intentionally. 

Similarly, some Malay Twitter users use English as the primary language in their tweets but still may include makan, a Malay word used in informal greetings (Izazi 21). Makan is not being used because it has no English translation, but because it is tied to Malay identity for members of that linguistic in-group (31).

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Moroccan users of Arabizi only use it with other Moroccans, thus making it an inherent marker of Moroccan identity whose usage indicates a shared context with the reader (Davies 76). Similarly, Saudi youth have been found to view Arabizi as “a strong marker of Arab youth identity and group solidarity” (Vavichkina 199).

Sakha Spelling

The choice to use Sakha, a language spoken in  northeastern Russia, is itself an assertion of ethnic and linguistic identity, since many Sakha speakers are bilingual in Russian due to generations of attempted assimilation (Ferguson 134, 143). But some speakers of Sakha are also using nonstandard spellings online to indicate their particular dialectal identity (131, 134-135). Specifically, some dialects of Sakha will pronounce a word-initial ‘s’ as ‘h’ when it is following a word that ends with a vowel, so speakers of these dialects will spell words with an initial ‘h’ rather than an initial ‘s’. The Sakha ‘h’ is not present in Russian phonology, so this change in spelling also lets writers further distance themselves from the Russian language (141). This is also evidenced by the fact that some users will overcorrect their writing, using word-inital ‘h’ in place of ‘s’ where it would not actually occur in spoken speech (141). So, although on the surface the ‘h’ spellings are meant to imitate spoken speech, in actuality they function more as markers of ethnic and linguistic identity. 

But this spelling change is not used by all Sakha-speaking users. Not all dialects of Sakha include the ‘s’ to ‘h’ change, and its use in writing is not sanctioned by any official Sakha language groups (140). As a result, Sakha speakers without this dialectal difference may view these users as seeking their own unique identity rather than participating in a unified Sakha identity, which can lead to conflict (139). Ultimately, users must decide whether the potential intimacy with other speakers of their dialect is worth the bad feelings that might arise with other speakers outside of the dialect.

Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticons have been adopted as another means of clarifying communication in synchronous conversations for users writing in languages as different as English, Arabic, and Chinese (Dresner 261, Haas 396, McCulloch 188). They can allow writers to convey their intentions, body language, or add context to the written message. This additional information helps guide readers to the writer’s intended meaning, thus creating a sense of intimacy between the sender and receiver. (Al-Rashdi 125). 

The Emotion Function

On the most basic level, we could say that these symbols represent facial expressions, and thus emotion (Dresner 250). So, writers are then able to convey emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust to their readers (Al Rashdi 119). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading doesn’t explain some uses of emoji or emoticon, like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”, which indicates that although emoji and emoticon may at times serve to convey emotion, this is not their only function.

The Intention Function

We can explain the above problematic example by recognizing that another function of emoji and emoticon is to convey a sender’s intentions (Al-Rashdi 120, Dresner 255-256). This is reflected by how the earliest emoticon, :-), was first used in 1982 to mark statements of humor (McCulloch 178). Over time, this emoticon would also come to be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178).

This early usage indicates that emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (Dresner 258).  This is further illustrated by emoticons like the winking face, which, as in spoken conversation, can indicate some insincerity on behalf of the speaker, as with “I’m blaming you ;)” in contrast to “I’m blaming you”.

Emoji are also used to clarify intentions in non-English contexts, such as with the example of “doge”, an emoji depicting a shiba inu which is popular on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). It can be used to indicate humor or irony, despite the emoji itself not having a clear visual connection to either (654). The emoji not only clarifies a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also changes the meaning of the message by indicating it is on some level insincere. Users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further, accompanied by the phrase “doge save my life” (655). Again, the combination of emoji and text clarifies the user’s intentions to state their opinion, and not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it; accompanying an opinionated message with doge indicates the message is being sent in good faith, thus minimizing the possibility of the message being interpreted as aggressive (655). 

In general, doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users, although the exact meaning conveyed by the emoji depends on the specific context it appears in (657). Thus, as with other emoji and emoticons, it serves to facilitate communication between users by conveying their intentions and downplaying potentially threatening utterances.

The Gestural Function

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Dresner 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Using this approach, we can categorize emoji in the same way we categorize gestures: as either emblems or illustrative (McCulloch 161-162, 166).

Emblem gestures have a fixed form and meaning (161-162). A thumbs up or down, the middle finger, and the ok symbol have a fixed form and standard meaning. These examples also all happen to have corresponding emoji, which can be used to symbolize these gestures in a written message (Al-Rashdi 122-123). The various flag emojis could also be called emblems, since they are representing a country or identity and their meaning doesn’t change in different contexts; people aren’t using a thumbs up to point to a previous message or using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblem emojis can also be repeated, representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent emphatic agreement or holding a thumbs-up for an extended period of time, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (McCulloch 171). 

 Illustrative emoji represent illustrative or co-speech gestures, which lack a fixed form or meaning and are used to support and reinforce speech (166). These are the undefined gestures we use to indicate size, place, direction of movement, and so on in our everyday conversations. Illustrative emoji do the same thing by reinforcing the subject and mood of a sentence; “Happy birthday!” becomes more celebratory when paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji, for example (Al-Rashdi 121, McCulloch 167). Unlike emblem emoji, the cake emoji or present emoji sent on its own or with different text would not necessarily convey the same celebratory tone (Logi 5). Illustrative emoji can also be used as response tokens to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how eye contact, a nod, or a “hmm” might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (Al-Rashdi 122, McCulloch 189).

Contextual Functions

In addition to conveying emotion, clarifying a user’s intentions, or appearing alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, emoji can also be used to add additional contextual information to a message. This could be related to how a message is delivered, like pairing text with a microphone emoji to indicate a sense of loudness (Al-Rashdi 120). But they can also be used to give information about the referent or situation being discussed. The message “Me & my worst frenemy” paired with a heart emoji indicates a specific affectionate attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not necessarily obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (Logi 19). In a similar vein, the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is”  gains additional meaning if it is paired with a cellphone, indicating that the mentioned disinterest involves people being distracted on their phones (18). Unlike the illustrative emoji mentioned above, these emoji are not reinforcing speech so much as contextualizing it; without the emoji, readers would come away with different interpretations of the text.

Syntactic Innovations

Some nonstandard syntax is being used online as a way to create intimacy between users. These structures play with the expectations of what interpersonal communication should look like by blurring the line between public and private expressions. Public expressions communicate something for a listener or audience (“I am in my room”), while private expressions are simply expressions of the speaker’s subjective experience (“in room”) (Kanetani 3). By making increased usage of private expressions, users invite their audience to adopt their perspective in order to fully understand the message they’re intending to convey (20).

These structures serve different purposes within sentences, from connecting cause and effect to making requests or expressing wishes. However, they all seem to be performing the same function within a larger discourse: creating intimacy between the author and their audience by inviting the audience into the author’s mind, thereby bridging both a gap in comprehension and a gap of literal distance between users (De Benito 32, Kanetani 22).

Because-X

Because-x is a nonstandard use of ‘because’ which allows it to directly precede interjections, bare nouns, adjectives, and verbs (Okada 719-720).  This can be illustrated in examples like “I’m studying because test” or “He agreed because yeah”. 

In standard use, ‘because’ links two clauses that describe an effect and that effect’s cause respectively (724). In “she went for a walk because the weather was nice,” the nice weather is the cause and going for a walk is the effect. We could also word this “she went for a walk because of the nice weather”, where we use ‘because of’ since our second clause is simply a noun phrase and lacks verbs.  

However, with because-x we can say “she went for a walk because weather” without using ‘of’, even though x (“weather”) is a noun phrase. We also see that “weather” is a bare noun; it has no determiners or adjectives attached to it (720). Why can we do this?

Kanetani argues that x allows for bare nouns and other categories of words because x is functioning as a private expression within the larger public expression of the complete sentence (3, 8). X doesn’t need to be specified with determiners or conjugation because the writer already knows what and who they are referring to. 

We can only understand the meaning of x by adopting the writer’s perspective and experience. Additionally, this private expression we are interpreting exists within a larger public expression; we know that we are meant to see this and we aren’t intruding on someone’s private thoughts. The author, by using this structure, is assuming that a reader can figure out what they’re intending to communicate (22). So the writer is creating a sense of intimacy both by using a private expression and by establishing they trust that the reader can correctly interpret the writer’s message.

X-siro+kudasai

X-siro+kudasai is an emerging syntactic structure among Japanese forum users (Naya 65). Kudasai is a Japanese politeness marker, somewhat equivalent to English ‘please’, and in standard Japanese follows verbs ending in -te (63). In X-siro+kudasai, kudasai follows the imperative (used to command or to order) form of a verb (-siro being the imperative ending). This creates a contrast between the polite kudasai and the more impolite imperative verbs. 

The structure itself is used to express indirect requests (65-66). Making requests is not something new – there are two ways to express requests in standard Japanese – but the standard request structures carry a sense of formality (67). Users decided these standard structures would be too formal for conversations on these online forums; since there is a sense of camaraderie between the users, writing formally would orient the author as more of an outsider (69). But using only the imperative form would feel rude. Users making requests didn’t want to make demands of someone who couldn’t fulfill their request; furthermore, imperative forms would again disrupt the camaraderie between users since they carry a connotation of authority or dominance (70). X-siro+kudasai acts as a compromise to avoid rudeness while maintaining the informal nature of the situation (69). 

The x in this structure, like the x of because-x, also functions as a private expression which “expresses the mental state of the writer”, while the addition of kudasai marks the expression as being a public expression for an audience (73). The structure as a whole serves as an expression of desire, while the request is an implied secondary meaning (73-75). In other private expressions in Japanese the imperative functions in a similar way, to express a desire or a wish rather than a command (74). Thus, it seems that the x-siro+kudasai structure is indeed another example of a private expression within a larger public expression, where readers must adopt the author’s perspective to understand the intended meaning and what interactions the author is hoping to initiate.

Ojalá

Another syntactic innovation can be seen with ojalá, a fixed Spanish expression which does not conjugate for person or tense, which roughly means “I wish” or “I hope”. It can be used on its own or can take a subordinate clause with a subjunctive verb, as in the example “Ojalá que lo del Madrid sea un mal sueño”, or “I hope that what’s happened with Real Madrid was a bad dream” (De Benito 21-22). But you could not say, for instance, “Ojalá un libro nuevo”, which would read like “I wish a new book”. 

But some Spanish Twitter users have started saying using the expression in that manner, as in the examples “Ojalá unas terceras elecciones”, ‘I wish [for] third eleccions’, and “Ojalá estar viajando constantemente”, ‘I wish [I] were constantly traveling’ (22-23).

Interestingly, we can explain some of these examples by viewing them as public or private utterances. A sentence like “Ojalá encerrada con Aston Kutcher en un ascensor”, “I wish [I were] locked with Ashton Kutcher in an elevator”, drops an explicit subject (27). Although ojalá takes a clause without any explicit subject, users successfully interpreted this message to mean the speaker wished they themself were locked in an elevator (28). As in because-x, the author does not need to specify a subject because this is a private expression expressing their own desires. Ojalá, then, may be acting similarly to kudasai in x-siro+kudasai, and making this private expression public. However, this explanation does not explain every nonstandard instance of ojalá, so further research and analysis is needed.

Final Thoughts

Although we recognize that online communities are excellent places to discover emerging vocabulary or grammatical errors, what has been overlooked is the pragmatic aspect of language on the internet, and how users are adapting standard linguistic features and creating new linguistic strategies to communicate more clearly with one another. As shown in the examples here, they have taken the formal and disembodied varieties of their respective languages and adapted them to convey all those verbal and nonverbal cues we find in spoken language: emotion, emphasis, tone, gesture, regional identity, feelings of familiarity, and more.

There is still plenty of research left to be done on this subject, especially with linguistic communities who speak languages other than English. But I hope that we are now beginning to move past lists of abbreviations found in text messages and tweets and towards deeper analyses of why people are making these linguistic choices and how these choices impact and function within a larger discourse.

 

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Darics, Erika. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 141-148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Davies, Eirlys. “Colloquial Moroccan Arabic: Shifts in Usage and Attitudes in the Era of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqxb42.10.

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Kanetani, Masaru. “A grammatico-pragmatic analysis of the  because X construction: Private expression within public expression.” F1000Research, vol. 10, 28 Feb. 2022, doi:10.12688/f1000research.72971.2. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

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Nini, Andrea, et al. “The Graphical Representation of Phonological Dialect Features of the North of England on Social Media.” Dialect Writing and the North of England, edited by Patrick Honeybone and Warren Maguire, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 266–96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv182jrdf.16. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

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November 27, 2022 · 11:42 pm

Week 10: A Case Study of Internet Arabic

Much of the analysis of Arabic language usage on the internet has focused on Arabizi, the non-standardized system of writing Arabic with the Latin script (Davies 70). Although these papers largely focus on orthographic features of this system, they still can provide us with some insight as to how Arabic is being used in online contexts and what routes future researchers can take to dig into the questions surrounding these uses and Arabizi in general.  

 

Some Background on Arabic Dialect

Arabic is distinct from English in that it has a very standardized formal form, called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Fusha, but this form is not used by native speakers in daily speech. Every Arabic speaker speaks in dialectal Arabic. MSA is also the form of the language that has been most often used for formal writing. Writing dialectal Arabic is not new – it has historically appeared in some private contexts, like handwritten letters (71). But there are no standards for writing in dialect, and writing in dialect has been stigmatized for most of the Middle East’s modern history. Using the formal variety of Arabic indicated that someone was educated; conversely, writing in dialect because one was unable to write in formal Arabic marked that person as backwards or ignorant. As such, dialectal Arabic has remained a language largely only spoken, while formal Arabic has been a largely written language, spoken only in highly formal contexts. 

 

Rise of Arabizi

Writing Arabic with the Latin script is not a 21st century innovation. French colonialism in Morocco and other parts of northern Africa led to a bilingual administration system which used both the Arabic script and the Latin script (both for French and to transliterate Arabic) (71). But Arabizi as it exists today was shaped by technological advances and limitations. Case in point: early computers and phones couldn’t display or input the Arabic script. The only choice for people who wanted to use these devices to communicate in Arabic was to write in the Latin script (71). 

Arabizi has challenged the traditional views of writing in dialect. Today, people of all educational levels and classes are texting in Arabizi. Its use online makes it highly visible and public, as opposed to older forms of dialect writing, which were largely private (71). Not only is it being used on personal social media profiles, but also on official company webpages (74). Arabizi is also moving into offline contexts, being seen in graffiti, flyers, and print ads on billboards or in magazines (74). And although ads which use Arabizi are often advertising everyday products, some companies are now using Arabizi in advertisements for luxury products as well (75). It seems, then, that Arabizi may be allowing for writing in dialect to shed some of its long-held stigma. 

 

Features of Arabizi

This alternative system of writing has not been standardized and was not imposed by a government or organization, but has been created by individual users (Davies 71, Vavichkina 198, 207). The lack of official writing rules may make Arabizi feel more accessible to people who do not feel confident in their ability to write in MSA or formal English or French (Davies 73). The frequency of Arabizi use versus Arabic script use depends on several factors, including where the user is located (its popularity may differ between regions), the user’s personal preferences, and whether the user is frequently incorporating other languages into their messages (72). This is a fairly common occurrence, as in a survey of 248 Moroccan university students 97.1% mixed French and Moroccan Arabic, 77.7% mixed English and Moroccan Arabic, and 67.4% used all three languages (79). If a user is frequently including French or English words in their messages, then it may be easier to write everything with the Latin script rather than switch between keyboards and writing/reading directions. 

The orthographic choices users make tend to differ from the official transliteration standards of the French colonial era (71-72). However, individual users may be influenced by French or English spelling standards. For example, someone who speaks English may write the Arabic word for ‘thanks’ as ‘shukran’, while someone who speaks French might write it ‘chokran’ (Davies 72, Vavichkina 203).

The most prominent new orthographic feature in Arabizi may be the use of numbers to represent Arabic letters (72). Early phones combined the keyboard with the number pad. Using numbers to represent letters thus allowed users to type more quickly, since they had to push buttons fewer times (72). And it made sense to use numbers to stand in for some Arabic letters, because the numbers themselves had a visual resemblance to some letters. Numbers do not appear to be used for rebuses or other phonetic replacements, as sometimes occurs in English-speaking online contexts (‘gr8’ for ‘great’, or ‘4’ for ‘for’) (Vavichkina 202). However, use of numbers may be becoming less common with time; Vavichkina’s 2021 study of 372 Arabizi comments on news videos found that users tended to use consonant clusters to represent sounds rather than their associated numeral (201-202). This may be due to technological shifts; smartphones now host numerals on a different keyboard than letters, requiring users to shift between the two.  

Arabizi is essentially a transliteration of dialectal speech (198). As such, it preserves many of the features of Arabic dialect that differ from MSA. The case markers of MSA are dropped in Arabizi, as they are in Arabic dialects (203). Morphological elements, like the b-/ba- prefix used in dialect for present tense verbs, are also used in Arabizi (205). 

Spelling is not standardized and largely phonetic (204). This can lead to a disconnect between related words, as MSA has highly formulaic ways of deriving words, meaning that readers can intuit a word’s meaning by knowing the formula being used and the meaning associated with the root letters. Latinized spellings, in all their variety, can easily obscure these formulaic structures, potentially making it harder for readers to make connections between related words (204). 

Standard Arabic writing conventions are also disrupted by how Arabizi users treat glottal stops. Traditionally, no word in Arabic can start with a vowel; rather, words that start with a vowel actually start with a glottal stop. This is marked in the Arabic script. In Arabizi, however, users drop the glottal stop altogether and just start words with vowels (204). This phonetic spelling also allows users to add letters to words – specifically, the short vowels that usually go unmarked in texts written with the Arabic script (202). 

 

Factors Determining Arabizi Use

Arabizi is considered to be an informal system of writing. The survey of Moroccan students found that it was most commonly used to communicate with friends or classmates, with texting and instant messaging being the most common contexts it was found in (Davies 75-76). Only 22% of the students used Arabizi in emails and, interestingly, only 31.5% used it for writing notes in class (76). Arabizi is therefore not simply for informal writing, but for informal writing in digital contexts. 

Additionally, Arabizi use can depend on age, familiarity, and nationality. The surveyed students largely did not use Arabizi when communicating with people of their parents’ generation or older (of the 36.4% who did, most used it to communicate with older family members) (76). This could be either due to gaps in comprehension – older people might not be as familiar with Arabizi – or because users see Arabizi as too informal (and therefore disrespectful) to use with older people. Considering that most of the students who did use Arabizi with older people were communicating with family members, whom they are more likely to be close with and therefore able to more easily flout expectations of respect with, I think this latter interpretation might make more sense. 

69% of students said they used Arabizi with peers whom they didn’t know personally, with some students saying that using Arabizi with strangers would be impolite or disrespectful (76). Again, this points to the idea that Arabizi is not only informal but also may carry a sense of intimacy or familiarity that would be impolite or uncomfortable to impose on strangers. 

Finally, 92.5% of the students reported using Arabizi only with other Moroccans, with the explanation that other Arabic speakers would not understand them (76). Considering that dialect can vary widely from country to country, and Moroccan Arabic is considered to be especially distinct, this explanation does make some sense. The use of Moroccan Arabic in general, whether written in the Arabic or Latin script, thus functions as a marker of identity. Just as with other dialectal writing online, using words specific to Moroccan dialect can also establish a sense of intimacy or familiarity with other users. 

Why do individuals choose to use Arabizi? When the Moroccan students were asked about their motivations for using Arabizi, they listed several reasons. 85% of the students thought it allowed them to write more quickly, and 84% thought it was easier to write (77). Some thought it was easier to express their feelings in Arabizi (77). This is seemingly backed up by data from Vivichkina’s study, which found that Arabizi comments tended “to express appreciation or emotion” (201). The Moroccan students also said using Arabizi made it easier to communicate – 79% of students thought Moroccan dialect was easier to read when it was written in the Latin script (Davies 78). It is easier to fully vocalize a text in the Latin script, after all (77-78). In fact, a fairly large percentage (61.3%) said they never wrote Moroccan Arabic with the Arabic script because “the result was incomprehensible”(79). 

Of the Moroccan students, only 36.5% thought it largely was cool or fashionable, and only 32.5% saw it as a marker of identity (78). I assume that by ‘marker of identity’ they mean a marker of youth culture or of some other subculture. As I said above, the use of Arabizi with Moroccan dialect does most definitely invoke a Moroccan identity, since it is almost entirely being used only with other Moroccans. On the other hand, a 2018 study of Saudi youth found that they viewed Arabizi as “cool and stylish” and thus “a strong marker of Arab youth identity and group solidarity” (Vavichkina 199). The same study found that youths thought using Arabizi made them stand out and allowed them to show off their knowledge of a foreign language like English (197). The ability to use non-standard orthography also shielded them from the embarrassment of making spelling mistakes (197). Clearly, motivations for using Arabizi differ depending on region.

 

Arabizi versus Standard Arabic

Arabic language media and the general public tend to view Arabizi negatively (Davies 80). They fear that it represents a loss of proficiency in or a simplification of MSA. But the Moroccan students voiced support for MSA (79). And, despite the fact that dialect and MSA tend to mix in daily speech, only 26.9% of the students said they mixed Moroccan Arabic and MSA in online communications (79). There seems to be a cultural resistance to using the Latin script to write MSA. Davies argues that rather than blurring the distinction between dialect and MSA, thus threatening MSA, the use of Arabizi actually makes a clear distinction between the two varieties through the use of two different scripts (79). In doing so, it can shield MSA from becoming simplified or being further influenced by English (Vavichkina 208). Arabizi can also act as an important tool for those of Middle Eastern heritage who live outside the region. They may be familiar with an Arabic dialect due to hearing family members speak it, but may not have received a formal Arabic education (Davies 81). Arabizi allows them to communicate with other Arabic-speakers despite this fact.

 

Final Thoughts

Arabizi, as with other phenomena I’ve looked at, is an informal writing system being used for interpersonal communication. Said system is largely influenced by spoken language rather than formal written varieties of language. However, further analysis will need to be done to better determine whether there are features of spoken language missing from Arabizi and other forms of Arabic used online and whether there are features specific to Standard Arabic present within Arabizi. Regional analysis might also be interesting to see if Arabizi differs dramatically from region to region (beyond the dialectal differences we expect). In any case, it’s clear that analyzing Arabic as it exists in online contexts would make for some interesting results.

 

References

Davies, Eirlys. “Colloquial Moroccan Arabic: Shifts in Usage and Attitudes in the Era of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqxb42.10.

Vavichkina, Tatiana, Yulia Vlasova, and Elena Paymakova. “Present and Future of the Arabic Language Transliteration on the Internet (linguistic features of Arabizi).” LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021, pp. 195-213.

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November 25, 2022 · 3:00 pm

Week 6: Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticon: the fun and playful little pictures you can add to text messages. But that’s not all they are. As it turns out, these little pictures can be used to convey additional meaning and may actually be fulfilling an important function within digital communications.

 

Emoji and Emoticons – What’s the Difference?

Although the two terms look like they should be interchangeable, emoji and emoticon actually are different things. 

Emoticon is a portmanteau of ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ (McCulloch 178.) They are the little pictures we make by combining keyboard symbols – things like 🙂 and 🙁 and <3, to type a few. They first arose in 1982 on Carnegie Mellon University’s computer message system (177). Emoticons allowed users to integrate these little icons into their texts, as opposed to having a picture attached to the end of a post. 

Emoji originated in Japan in the late 1990s, and the term is a combination of ‘e’, picture, and ‘moji’, character (180). These are the premade illustrations that people often add to texts – things like a thumbs up, a tree, a laughing face, and so on.   

Emoji were actually preceded in Japan by kaomoji, which were more similar to American emoticons in that they used keyboard symbols to make faces or pictures (179). The ‘kao’ in kaomoji means face. Unlike American emoticons and their sideways faces, kaomoji tended to be face on: 0.o and  ^_^ are two examples. 

But what’s interesting is that we have emoticon and kaomoji developing around the same time in two separate environments (although the two would come into contact later, leading some American users to use both kaomoji and emoticon). This could be a coincidence, or it could suggest that both were fulfilling some communication need that users had. 

 

Where do Emoji & Emoticons show up?

Emoji & emoticon tend to appear in synchronous contexts, like texts or instant messages, rather than in more asynchronous contexts like emails or blogs (Herring 261). They also show up less often in conversations that are more serious or work-focused, suggesting that they may carry a sense of informality, light-heartedness, or playfulness (259, 261). With these context, we can guess that their function is likely related to the needs of speech-like interpersonal writing. Within a conversation itself, they’re more likely to appear at the end of sentences or utterances than mid-thought. They can appear paired with text or by themselves.

 

Analyzing Emoji & Emoticon

There are several ways we can approach emoji and emoticon. On the most basic level, they seem to represent facial expressions. Early researchers took this to mean that emoji and emoticon illustrate emotion. Hence, by using emoticon or emoji, we’re conveying information about our emotions that would otherwise be unavailable to our audience (250). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading breaks down when we examine it further. The 😛 face or 😉 face, for instance, represent facial expressions but don’t represent specific emotions (252). Furthermore, emoticon are sometimes used in contexts where the content of its surrounding text don’t necessarily match the emotion of the face – like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”. So to get to the bottom of what these little faces and pictures are doing, we’ll have to look into more complex explanations. 

Some people have described emoji as their own language. But this is clearly not true, since we cannot communicate solely in emoji (McCulloch 157-158). This is for two reasons. First, emoji do not always have singular, fixed meanings, but can have their meaning shaped by the text surrounding them and vice versa (Logi 5). As such, emoji become less and less intelligible as they are disconnected from language (4). Secondly, emoji and emoticon are very bad at illustrating abstract concepts; things like tense, mental faculties, and so on. They also don’t allow us to easily specify through the use of determiners (this, that, these, etc) or proper names (New York, IKEA, etc). So if emoji and emoticon aren’t emotional icons, and they are a language, what are they?

 

The Illocutionary Force Approach

By returning to the first emoticons from 1982, we can see that they were assigned a specific function from the beginning. Amidst joking discussion of speculative situations at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, 🙂 was suggested as a way to mark statements of humor so as not to confuse or concern other users (McCulloch 178). Over time, this narrow usage would expand, and 🙂 would be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178). So, emoticons were being used not to illustrate facial expressions, but to convey the intention of the author to readers (Herring 255-256). Herring describes emoticons as “indicators of illocutionary force”. Illocutionary acts are acts that are carried out through their being spoken: promises, threats, joking, and so on. Emoticons can clarify what sort of illocutionary act a writer is performing – a joke, a promise, a request, and so on.

If we accept that emoticon and emoji convey intention, many of their uses in context make more sense. A wink in spoken conversation denotes some double meaning or inside joke, and a winking face like 😉 can add an attitude of humor to a message (“I’m blaming you” versus “I’m blaming you ;)”). So emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (258). Emoticons that appear by themselves function in very similar ways, and either modify previous messages or express a general sentiment (259). 

This approach also gets around another issue with the emoticon = emotion hypothesis: facial expressions tend to be unconscious or unintentional, while typing is very much intentional (261). But a 🙂 in a message doesn’t feel like a forced smile, because it’s not; it’s a statement of intention (257). Although Herring focuses on emoticon, we can see how this approach can also work for emoji, seeing as how they also include pictures of facial expressions. The variety of emoji available may also allow users to further specify or clarify their intentions (for instance, a simple smiling face and a face with a wide grin might be used to indicate different amounts of humor or excitement).

 

The Gestural Approach

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Herring 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Obviously, gestures and other body language are absent in written texts. In formal texts, this may not present much issue, as they often call for a neutral tone, disembodied from the actual writer. But if users are trying to write text that has speech-like qualities, they might want the ability to write gestures into their messages as well.

McCulloch specifically divides emoji into two categories with two different corresponding types of gesture. First there are emblematic emoji, which function like emblematic gesture (161-162). Secondly, there are more illustrative emoji that function as co-speech or illustrative gestures (166).

Emblematic gestures are those that have a fixed form and meaning. They also often can be named, as with giving a thumbs up/down, flipping someone off, the ok symbol, zipping the lips, and so on. Some emoji are also emblematic; the thumbs up/down emoji, of course, but also the eggplant (which by itself has sexual connotations) and the various flag emoji (which represent a country or identity). They have been given some intrinsic and fairly fixed meaning; people aren’t using a thumbs down as a way to point down, and they aren’t using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblematic emojis can be repeated, perhaps representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent holding a thumbs-up for a while, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (171). These fixed gestures, like emoji, are used intentionally in conversation (187). 

Illustrative or co-speech gestures are much more fluid. They’re difficult to describe in writing, but we use them all the time to illustrate size, shape, direction, and so on; they reinforce and support what we’re saying (166). The same gesture could mean two different things depending on the context: swiping one’s hand could indicate direction (come here/go away), size (this big/this small), emotion (dismissiveness, surrender, excitement), and so on. Illustrative emoji do the same thing in re-inforcing the subject and perhaps adding to the mood (“Happy birthday!” versus “Happy birthday!” paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji) (167). They also can be used simply to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how body language or meaningless vocalization might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (189). For the most part, researchers have not found that people use long strings of illustrative emoji to tell complex stories. The vast majority of emojis, in general, appear by themselves or in short strings, and they usually appear alongside words or are short replies to previous messages (169). When illustrative emoji do appear in sets, they are usually simply repeated or placed with matching emoji (snowman/snowflake, different colored hearts, and so on) and the order they appear in doesn’t appear to change their meaning (170). Again, this points toward an illustrative/clarifying function rather than a communicative function. 

 

The Social Semiotic Approach

Both of the aforementioned approaches focus more on the function of emoticons and emoji in a text; the social semiotic approach is a closer analysis of how they can be used to create meaning, and what sort of meanings they can create (Logi 2). Meaning is created through users’ choices and the interactions between those choices within a text (5-6). So, researchers need to consider the literal text, the literal emoji/emoticon (specifically emoji in this paper), and how those two interact to create a full meaning (6-7). 

Emoji can interact with text in several ways; they can appear alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, they can replace a word or words, or they can reinforce an attitude or judgment found in the literal text (14). In some cases, text gives emoji meaning, while emoji don’t add much to the meaning of the text. The reinforcement of literal meaning can be seen in the example of “Incheon Airport” paired with an airplane emoji (7). Additionally, this example shows us that in some cases the text assigns meaning to the emoji, while the emoji itself does not assign a meaning to its accompanying words. The airplane emoji could refer to a literal airplane, or to any number of related concepts like a pilot, flying, a trip, or an airport. When paired with the text, the user assigns the “airport” meaning to the airplane emoji (7). However, the emoji only has this fixed meaning temporarily, and later responses within the same conversation could assign it a different meaning (ie, “Hope you enjoy your trip!” paired with the airplane emoji would give the emoji the meaning of “trip” rather than the previously assigned meaning of “airport”) (14-15). 

Emoji paired with text can create a number of kinds of meanings beyond reinforcing the literal meaning of a text. To further study this, Logi and other researchers collected texts from students and interviewed them about how they used emoji (8). They were then able to analyze the types of meaning created by the collected texts. Some of these categories of meaning included attitude (the user’s positive or negative feelings towards something), graduation (intensity of attitude), involvement (identification with a group) and so on (8, 11-12). Emoji, then, are definitely not limited to literal or emotional meaning only. 

Emoji and text can also interact in a more collaborative way (17). The message “Me & My worst frenemy” paired with the heart emoji indicates a specific type of attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (19). Similarly, emoji can act to add information about a situation described in text. Adding a cellphone emoji to the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is” lets us know that the disinterest that the user is actually referring to likely involves people being on their phones rather than paying attention to whatever the event is (18). 

In short, emoji appear to be able to support and help express a variety of different meanings within a text. In some cases they are superfluous, while at other times their inclusion clarifies or adds to the literal meaning of the surrounding text.

 

The Popularity of Emoji & Emoticon

Humans have liked adding images to our texts for a long time, from the illustrations on medieval manuscripts to the little doodles we add to cards or letters (McCulloch 174-175). In that sense, emoji and emoticons are simply the most recent incarnation of textual adornment. But, as shown above, emoji & emoticons are also serving to clarify communication (188). They also tend to coexist with other expressive textual features, like nonstandard spellings and letter repetition (185). So in a sense, we could say that emoji and emoticons are popular and widespread for the same reason these other expressive features are widespread: because they’re providing some layer of additional meaning that the words by themselves do not (192). 

Despite the fact that they are being used for similar, if not identical, purposes, emoji and emoticon don’t seem to be in competition with each other (185). This could be due to user preference – some people just prefer the look of a 🙂 over an emoji face – or it may be due to other factors, like technological support of emoji (Herring 260). Further research would be needed to determine whether there are specific linguistic, demographic, or environmental factors that influence the choice between emoticon and emoji. 

 

References

Dresner, Eli, and Herring, Susan C. “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory, vol. 20, no. 3, 2010, pp. 249-268. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01362.x

Logi, Lorenzo, and Michele Zappavigna. “A Social Semiotic Perspective on Emoji: How Emoji and Language Interact to Make Meaning in Digital Messages.” New Media & Society, Sept. 2021, doi:14614448211032965.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=1617183&site=ehost-live.

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November 6, 2022 · 2:31 pm

Week 5: ‘Textspeak’

Now we can get into the idea of textspeak/textisms. What words and spellings are people using when they are texting or messaging? Do these hold true across different populations? And do these usages have any impact on users’ abilities to use more formal registers of a language?

 

Features of ‘Textspeak’

On a general level, it seems like the same categories of (English) textisms appear in samples both from native speakers and from non-native speakers. Abbreviations and omitted words tend to be common (Fenianos 68, Haas 386). Non standard spellings may be used to indicate informality, to cut down on keystrokes, or to “suggest pronunciation or, more precisely, to draw attention to associations between…ways of pronouncing words and certain regional and cultural dialects” (Haas 386). This latter function would include spelling differences like ‘partay’ for ‘party’ and ‘goin’ for ‘going’. Meanwhile, acronyms (‘lol’, ‘omg’) and alphabetisms (‘c’ for ‘see’, and similar examples) seem to be used less frequently by non-native speakers. This may be because extracting the meaning of these forms requires another step of coding/decoding which non-native speakers may find to be more labor-intensive (Fenianos 70-71).

Message content tended to include vague references – although this is more likely a reflection of the informal register, rather than a reflection of the message format itself (68). Pronouns were frequent, and determiners were used when discussing time (specifically future plans), shared experiences, or when referring to the conversation itself (67-68).  Users also made frequent use of “response tokens”, which are messages which are not communicating new information but are simply acknowledging and displaying interest in what a user has said (68-69). My guess these response tokens occur frequently because we lack the simultaneous feedback we usually receive in face-to-face conversations (check out Week 2 for more discussion of simultaneous feedback).

Some features added to a message, rather than abbreviating words. Users used emoticons “meant to mimic the human face and capture what is communicated…in face-to-face communication” (Haas 396) – in other words, to convey expression and tone. In a similar vein, sound words (like ‘haha’ to indicate laughter) showed up in multiple samples (Tagliamonte 15). Phatic words or phrases, like ‘lol’ or ‘wow’, also appeared frequently, and usually acted more to show participant engagement or to move the conversation along than to communicate actual information (15-16, Haas 392, 395). In Tagliamonte’s sample, for instance, ‘lol’ occurred more often at transitions in the conversation, in a final position, or by itself than at the beginning or middle of a message (16). 

Some things were generally left out of messages. Determiners referring to a location tended to be rare, since conversation participants do not have a shared experience of space and location (Fenianos 67). Sign-offs or goodbyes were less frequent than greetings (69). This may be because conversations can take place over an extended period of time, making it difficult to partition where one conversation ends and another begins. Greetings, on the other hand, could be used to draw a user’s attention back to the ongoing conversation in a polite way (“Good morning! Are we still planning to meet up later?”).

In terms of structure, the sampled messages tended to be limited in the number of clauses included per message. In the sample of non-native speakers, most utterances tended to include a single clause; there were no utterances which contained more than three clauses (67). When there were multiple clauses, they tended to be connected via a comma or simply forgo an explicit connector, like ‘and’, altogether.  

 

Why Nonstandard Features?

Why are we seeing some of these nonstandard features? Fenianos says “The participants have seemingly resorted to this writing style because it is easy, fast, and time-saving” (70). Haas disagrees with this assessment, saying that “brevity and speed are not of primary importance for these writers”, because if this were the case we would not be seeing “tensions between abbreviated and elaborated forms” (389). These elaborated or additive forms made up 67% of the features of her corpus of instant messages (389). Haas points out that these additive features “inscribe… oral features of language use into the written conversation” (390).  So Haas argues that users are adding features to their messages in order to evoke some elements of oral speech that would otherwise be unmarked. But these users are not marking every element of oral speech or their exact pronunciation (394). So the goal of these users is not to transcribe their own speech, but to use these nonstandard features strategically in order to convey the meaning they wish to convey. 

But it does seem like brevity does play some sort of role when it comes to choosing how to convey a message. Take the use of ‘so’ and ‘going to’; in both cases, these phrases are becoming more frequent in spoken language in the Toronto region, where Tagliamonte’s study was based. In the SMS portion of her data she did find that ‘so’ was being used at roughly the same rate as it was in face-to-face conversations (20). On the other hand we have ‘going to’, which has been displacing ‘will’ in the Toronto region (23). But in the SMS data, ‘will’ and its contracted forms were much more frequently used than ‘going to’ (24). If texting language is solely influenced by a texters’ spoken speech, then ‘going to’ should be overtaking ‘will’ in the data sample. Because we see this is not the case, we might guess that ‘will’ has remained in common usage because it is much briefer than ‘going to’ and that ‘so’ is appearing more frequently because it is shorter than other intensifiers such as ‘very’. 

In short, it seems that neither brevity nor spoken language are the sole drivers of what word choice and features people are using when they communicate through means like texting or instant messaging. 

 

Impact on Formal Writing Skills

The formal language skills of young adults, at least according to Tagliamonte’s 2016 study, do not appear to be negatively influenced by their texting habits (27). This study was unique in that it collected formal writing samples from each of the 45 college-aged participants (7). Their writing samples had intact standard grammar, and did not have nonstandard word forms (13). It is possible that there might be more confusion of registers among younger students, but this study seems to indicate that young adults who text or message in nonstandard English are not doing so due to lack of education or knowledge about standard English. 

 

Remaining Questions

One thing that does need to be considered is all of the studies cited drew from populations of teenagers or young adults. Studies looking at a different or wider age bracket could give us some insight as to whether these features tend to be retained by users as they age, and whether there is any divide between the habits of older and younger texters. Ensuring that these samples also come from populations who are diverse in other ways (race, class, etc) would help to provide an even better picture of how common these forms are across different groups. 

 

Citations

Fenianos, Christelle Frangieh. “Internet Language: An Investigation into the Features of Textisms in an ESL/EFL Context.” Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63-74. https://theartsjournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/1848/835. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

Haas, Christina, et al. “Young People’s Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 45, no. 4, 2011, pp. 378–404. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050580. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

Tagliamonte, Sali A. “So Sick or so Cool? The Language of Youth on the Internet.” Language in Society, vol. 45, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43904632. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

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October 16, 2022 · 1:22 pm

Week 2: Practical Effects of Technology

Welcome back to week two! This past week I looked at what I called the “practical effects of technology” on online language. 

The biggest takeaway from this week was that the online world offers a unique context in which to use language because it combines factors from both written and spoken language. This is not to say that the language itself becomes especially unique as a result, but we’ll dig into that more a bit later.

One benefit of the internet is that it contains a multitude of different people who are writing in a variety of settings. Traditionally published writing tends to be found in a limited number of contexts, like books and newspapers. These mediums tend to have more standard and formal varieties of the language (although not always!). Additionally, publishing in these formats is inaccessible  for many people. The internet, on the other hand, can be used by anyone with an internet connection and time. As such, it can be used to explore people’s everyday casual and informal language (if we assume that people’s tweets, texts, and emails reflect people’s spoken speech) (McCulloch 5). The other benefit of the internet is that it allows these informal forms of language to be explored outside of a laboratory and research context, which may influence individuals to change their language if they are aware it will be analyzed by other people later. 

So, what practical effects does the internet and other technology have on the recording and publishing of written and spoken language? Are there distinct differences between offline and online writing? How do online conversations differ from offline face-to-face conversations?

Let’s jump in.

 

Writing Online vs. Offline

Writing online is just that – writing. However, online contexts do present some differences from handwritten and traditionally published writing. Offline writing is static and subject to space constraints  – the back of a postcard, the space allocated to a newspaper column, and so on (Crystal 17). It tends to be easily categorized as public or private (Jucker 42). Often there is a delay between when something is written and when it is published, and writers need to take that delay into account when considering how a reader might interpret their writing. This delay means writers have the time to read over and edit their work before it is published, often resulting in “the development of careful organization and compact expression, with often intricate sentence structure” (Crystal 18). Traditional writing usually produces coherent and internally consistent pieces, since collaborative work with multiple authors will usually either attribute specific elements of the text to specific authors or will be edited so as to produce a similar style throughout the entire piece.  

Digital writing presents some differences to these traits. Articles and posts don’t need to be abbreviated due to the amount of space available, and oftentimes can be edited after they are originally published, either to correct for errors or to update the piece with more relevant information (30). Some digital writing, such as Wikipedia articles, is created by multiple authors over time. Thus, there exist articles and pages which may not be fully internally consistent, as different authors and editors have different ideas of both what content should be included (and what should be emphasized, explained, or glossed over) and what style is appropriate for the piece (uses of narration, figurative language, register, and so on) (31). In other cases, work by a singular author might be difficult to classify as a text at all. For example, tweets on a timeline might not add to a coherent “text” because the content of each one may be totally separate from the next (Jucker 52). 

In some regards, however, digital writing retains similarities to traditional writing. In some contexts there is a character limit for posts or texts (58). And asynchronous writing still exists online, so writers of articles and emails do need to account for a delay between when they are written and when they will be read. As in offline publishing, users in these contexts are likely to double check their grammar and spelling before releasing their work into the world. Similarly, emails cannot be edited once they are sent, and many messaging applications also do not allow for edits to be made, maintaining the static nature we see in offline writing. But users may use more ambiguous language in texts or chats, since the rapid back and forth of such a conversation allows for more room for correction or elaboration (43). Meanwhile, when handwriting a letter or writing a newspaper article, you might be more careful to make sure your message was as clear as possible. The delay between writing and reading makes it more difficult to quickly clarify what the author intended to say.

Multiple articles and authors seem to share the sentiment that digital writing (especially texting or messaging features on apps/social media) can be a hybrid medium that includes features we usually associate with spoken language. Speech is spontaneous and quick, often with blurry sentence boundaries. Similarly, texting or direct messages tend to expect a timely response, and make use of sentence fragments (a very common feature in spoken language) rather than sticking solely to complete sentences (Crystal 18, 20). These messages often cannot be edited, so any errors must be corrected in later messages – just like in spoken language. 

Some features of spoken language do not translate as easily – for instance, facial expressions and gestures can be indicated, to some extent, by emoji and emoticon, but they certainly are not the same thing (23). Features like intonation, prosody, volume, and tempo are also largely lost. But the largest difference may be the lack of simultaneous feedback. In spoken language, participants in a conversation can shape how a speaker is talking even when it’s not their turn. Facial expression, body language, and filler words can indicate a listener’s comprehension and engagement with a conversation. A confused look might spur the speaker to elaborate, while a bored or irritated look might cause a speaker to trail off or finish their thoughts quickly. This feedback is missing in digital writing because the audience cannot access the writer’s utterance until they send it. So a writer will receive feedback on a previously sent message, but they cannot access feedback on a message they are currently typing (21).

With all of this in mind, David Crystal describes internet language as “writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech rather than as speech which has been written down” (21). 

 

Technology and Turn-Taking

Conversations between two or more people are made up of a series of turns. Generally, only one person has the floor at any given time. Through spoken and physical signals, often unintentional, the speaker can cede the floor to another person. In the early days of computers and the internet, how to translate face to face conversations into a digital written context was not immediately obvious. In the early 1970s, the TENEX system used a single text file which both users shared; if you started typing before the other user had finished, your words would overlap with each other (McCulloch 210). Later systems tried using chat boxes; each user had a box and typed all of their turns in this box (211). However, this made it difficult to follow a conversation chronologically, as one had to look between each of the chat boxes to see who had said something new. Today’s upward scrolling chat first appeared in the 1980s. Unlike the TENEX or chat box systems, these scrolling chat systems did not show messages keystroke-by-keystroke, but rather only showed the full message when it was sent by a user. 

In face-to-face conversations we have what is called ‘turn monitor’, meaning we hear utterances as they are being constructed (Jenks 79-80). A keystroke-by-keystroke approach to digital writing would give users this turn monitor, but it also poses some issues. We tend to read more quickly than we can type, which could cause irritation as other users waited for someone to finish typing (McCulloch 211). Pauses in typing might indicate that the writer was done typing or that they were trying to decide how to phrase something. Without the body language and tone we can utilize in face-to-face conversations, readers might not be able to tell the difference. 

But on the surface, message-by-message chat also seems like it would pose problems. Wouldn’t users be more easily interrupted? Won’t there be issues with ambiguity if there are multiple conversations occurring at once? But in practice these potential problems don’t seem to present much difficulty to users. For one thing, most typed utterances are directly adjacent to the utterance they are related to or responding to (Crystal 25). But when they aren’t, users are often looking for the specific lexical terms or phrasing that would be relevant to their earlier message, so they can recognize that some messages in a chat are not being directed towards them (26-27). Users could also clarify their language to ensure clarity of their message, such as addressing a specific recipient or reintroducing the topic in their text (“I can’t” versus “I can’t come to the party”) (Jenks 84, McCulloch 25). 

Furthermore, although the lack of turn monitor might cause some issues for users, texts and chats do offer the advantage of ‘turn recall’ – we are able to scroll back to earlier messages to remember what was said, rather than having to rely on memory as happens in face-to-face conversations (Jenks 79). This allows for more pauses and gaps in chats and allows for multiple conversations to occur at once (85-86). 

As a result of these differences, turn-taking in online chats and texts does differ from turn-taking in face-to-face (FTF) conversations. In FTF conversations, turn transitions between individuals tend to occur near the end of someone’s turn rather than after they are done speaking; in online conversations, turn transitions by necessity occur after someone’s turn, since turn monitor isn’t available (80). Hesitation and restarts are used offline to ensure we are not encroaching on someone’s else’s turn, while in the digital realm any hesitation or restarts that occur will not be seen by the other participants, again due to the lack of turn monitor and simultaneous feedback (83). But these differences don’t seem to inhibit the speed and efficiency with which users are able to have conversations via text or direct message.

 

Sign Language Online

ASL and other signed languages are used online in specific contexts. The largely written format of the internet has for a long time meant sign language users need to use a written language in order to interact with others online. But newer technologies like virtual reality offer a way for speakers of signed languages to have synchronous conversations with each other in sign language. The specific technology involved presents two unique challenges to the language, as explained by TikTok user dillonthecheeseman. The first is that the handheld controllers do not allow for the full range of hand shapes needed to sign or fingerspell. VR users have developed modified fingerspelling signs to overcome this problem. The second issue is that VR does not allow for users to share their facial expressions, which are an important aspect of ASL grammar. Some users have tried using more dramatic body language to replace facial expressions. Since VR is a fairly new technology, we will have to see whether these sorts of modifications change over time or if they will impact offline signing in any way. 

 

Citations

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Dillonthecheeseman. “I’ll you guys what its like signing in Virtual Reality in a later video! #asl #americansignlanguage #signlanguage #virtualreality #vrsignlanguage #interesting.” TikTok, 23 Jul. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@dillonthecheeseman/video/7123725161181924654.

Dillonthecheeseman. “Let me know what you guys think! Would you like to see more VR signing? #asl #americansignlanguage #signlanguage #vr #virtualreality #vrsignlanguage #vrsign #vrasl #vrchat.” Tiktok, 14 Aug. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@dillonthecheeseman/video/7131668536522493226. 

Jenks, Christopher J. “Turn-Taking in Chat Rooms: Texting Versus Talking.” Social Interaction in Second Language Chat Rooms, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2014, pp. 76–94.  JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b2g8.9. Accessed 14 Sept. 2022.

Jucker, A. H., und C. Dürscheid. „The Linguistics of Keyboard-to-Screen Communication: A New Terminological Framework“. Linguistik Online, Bd. 56, Nr. 6, November 2012, doi:10.13092/lo.56.255.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019.

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